Inversions, a work in progress

People have said a lot of things to me over the years like…”you eat meat? I thought yogis didn’t eat meat?”, and, “you drink coffee? Doesn’t coffee make you tight?”, or how about, “you lift weights? Won’t that ruin your flexibility!”…The list goes on and on and on, about what people see as limitations as to why you can’t achieve your goals. Listen, I wasn’t born flexible, nor was I ever able to do the splits or a proper handstand until I started trying to in my mid-thirties. I just started trying to do the splits every day before my regular Bikram class, and sometimes after too, and after a year or so, I was doing the splits, (it took about 3 years to do straddle splits comfortably). I worked on handstands for over 8 years, and backbends for 2 years. I’ve been drinking coffee since I was 16, (I had a job in a 7-11 when I was in highschool and that’s where it all began!), and except for a few years in college, I’ve always eaten meat. I finally started to seriously lift weights in May 2010, and it’s actually helped some of my advanced postures. I do have to keep up a regular Bikram practice so that I don’t get stiff from the heavy lifting, but lifting weights intelligently won’t make you stiff. Not stretching will make you stiff, whether you lift weights or not.
Don’t listen to the naysayers. In yoga we learn everyday that true success depends on you, and that yoga takes place in the mind. You have to confront your own mind/body, and bring balance and alignment into your entirety. For most of us this will mean first disciplining the mind and body, so that you can start moving in a clear direction towards your goals…I will always remember Bikram Choudury lecturing to about 400 new teacher trainers that being a yogi has nothing to do with eating “goat food” (his term for vegetarian food), or what you choose to wear (Shakti, Gucci, who cares?), or the kind of yoga mat or journal you are reading. It has nothing to do at all with these aspects of physical life. It is more about your ability to sit calmly and happily ,”in the middle of L.A. rush hour traffic, with a broken air-conditioner, late for work, about to run out of gas, and someone cuts you off from your exit”. Like the smiling buddha in the centre of the hurricane, all you are doing is deep-breathing. In other words, you truly understand that your happiness and your success depends entirely on….YOU! If something or someone else can control your thoughts or feelings, you are the loser. I never believed that coffee would make me “tight”, and so it never did. Not trying to improve would have kept me tight!…One of the reasons I love my Bikram practice so much is that it has shown me time and again that most of the obstacles in life are illusion, that feelings and emotions don’t have to be reality, that I can be free from my thoughts in half-a-second, and that will-power means becoming bullet-proof and Everything-proof. By this I mean that every day I practice, I am usually smacked in the butt several times during class with this primary lesson. While we can improve our choices in life to makes things “easier” for ourselves, if you really have control over your mind, you will understand that you are already limitless. You won’t have to wait until you quit this habit, or go study with this person, or have this much money saved up, you will realize that everything is perfect just the way it is and you will find the strength and courage to go get the job done! That is the real gift of yoga.
Victories are won in the MIND first and foremost.